Sony Charges Publishers For DLC Bandwidth Usage

tlhIngan writes "Since October 1, 2008, Sony has been billing game publishers for DLC bandwidth usage. The game companies are forced to pay 16 cents per gigabyte downloaded by users (the 'Playstation Network Fee') regardless of whether the content is free or paid. The good news is that free content will only be billed during the initial 60 days it's up, but paid content will require fees forever. (No word on whether free content will mysteriously disappear after 60 days, though.) Given that some popular game demos run over a gigabyte by themselves, it could easily start costing publishers serious money (16 cents each for a few million downloads adds up). So far, it hasn't cut down the content available (or few publishers have started pulling content), but it's too soon to tell. It should be noted that Microsoft isn't charging publishers any money for content on Xbox Live, though some may argue that the 'gold premium content' is the same thing." Perhaps this is one of the reasons various publishers are pressuring Sony for a PS3 price cut.

Comments

$0.16/GB is a pretty good price

[Anonymous Coward]

$0.16/GB is what you'd pay to serve content at pretty huge volumes. If they published it on any other website, they'd probably pay more.

Re:$0.16/GB is a pretty good price

[Doctor_Jest]

Quite true... and since there's not a "gold subscriber" subsidy like there is on Live, I think it's reasonable. It's not unheard of, considering the installed base, to charge for this, but I'm sure since Sony's been taking it on the chin P.R. wise, this will be magnified more than it really needs to be.

To each his own. :) I wonder if anyone knows the going rates for Live content? I know the absurdly small file size probably nullifies that, as far as live arcade stuff goes, but what about demos? Does MS charge EA for demo space or is it simply rolled into the cost of your yearly gold membership? It's late... I'll google that tomorrow. :)

Re:$0.16/GB is a pretty good price

[kyrre]

Amazon S3 is likely one of the cheaper providers of storage. They charge from 17 cents pr gigabyte of download. In addition they will costs 10 cents pr gigabyte. They also charge pr request.

Re:$0.16/GB is a pretty good price

[Shadow of Eternity]

You forgot that they've already admitted that they make their entire system difficult and painful to use on purpose believing that it will extend it's life by making it more difficult to use it's full potential quickly.

Re:$0.16/GB is a pretty good price

[Anonymous Coward]

"per" is one letter longer than "pr"

Re:$0.16/GB is a pretty good price

[GoRK]

S3's transfer fees start at 17c to 10TB/mo. and decline to 10c at 150TB/mo. At the volumes we are talking about for game downloads at ~1-2GB each download you'd easily be at the top end.

And amazon isn't really that cheap either when it comes down to content delivery. It's nice because it's more or less on demand but if you can do a little bit of forward planning, a content delivery network like Akamai can give you better pricing.

Anyway the article is a stupid gripe about a nonexistent problem. Microsoft doesn't charge the publisher bandwidth fees because they choose to charge the customer. Furthermore anyone who thinks they can do it for "free" on their own website is under some serious delusions. A publisher unable to budget for this correctly is a bad publisher. I think perhaps they are just pissed because they can't provide the service and charge for the bandwidth themselves - I bet they would charge a lot more than 16c/GB.

Sony picked a price and terms that are reasonable and cost competitive in the market. There are some ways around it too - game downloads from PSN could contain only skeleton executable files which would download the rest of the data on first start from a publisher's own content servers. The fact that we're not seeing any of this is probably because it's just not that big of a deal. $200K in bandwidth fees to expose a million people or more to your game demo is money well spent. It comes out of the advertising budget and will give a better return than $200K spent on billboards, that's for sure.

Re:$0.16/GB is a pretty good price

[Doctor_Jest]

..And Microsoft had their "dilemma" about it, and temporarily (meaning they didn't want PSN to be the only place to get this game, even though it sucks) lifted their restriction. The game was $20 to boot. So they recouped any cash they would've lost in "overage" with the upped price, which I believe is the most expensive Arcade title to date. The previous was Braid at 1600 points, IIRC.

What I enjoy is the total lack of 400 point titles anymore. :) MS quietly killed the less profitable titles in favor of 800/1200/1600 point titles and no one seemed to notice, simply because it was so gradual. Oddly, I think that fits into the "passing the savings on to the user" model Live adopts. Community games don't really count, because they're a different breed of title, and the old arcade standbys originally came out at 400pts, with some topping 800. It's just my take on it, since I've no proof other than the missing 400pt titles.

Re:$0.16/GB is a pretty good price

[commodore64_love]

Hey... I start almost all my videogame auctions at just 1 single penny. If the item sells at that price (and they often due since few people want ten-year-old games), I HAVE to cover my costs, which are approximately:

2.50 postage
0.50 bubble envelope
0.75 ebay fees
1.00 paypal fees
0.25 misc stuff like foam/gasoline
=================
5.00 TOTAL for shipping plus handling, which is *exactly* the same amount that amazon.com charges to ship a videogame. Apparently amazon feels no guilt about making sure their costs are covered, and neither do I.

I support this

[electrosoccertux]

Hopefully this will keep publishers from shipping broken/empty games with plans of patching them up later (*cough* UT3 *cough*); and we could go back to actually getting a working game on the disk, not a game in need of a patch and more content.

Re:I support this

[Dutch Gun]

Hopefully this will keep publishers from shipping broken/empty games with plans of patching them up later (*cough* UT3 *cough*); and we could go back to actually getting a working game on the disk, not a game in need of a patch and more content.

Think about the math a bit. It's not exactly a deal-breaker to patch a game at $.16 per GB. That's only 16 cents out of their bottom line per game if they had to send a massive 1GB patch down to each user. Still, it's hard to say if this means we'll be less likely to see large, free demos to download on the PS3 in the future. It's probably more likely that publishers will still do this, but just factor this cost into their advertising budgets.

Still, it just doesn't strike me as the wisest of decisions to alienate publishers when your console isn't exactly leading the pack. Publishers might be just slightly less inclined to publish on their platform in the first place, and Sony can't really afford to lose too much ground at the moment.

Re:I support this

[c1t1z3nk41n3]

Maybe I'm too cynical but I find it more likely at this point that they'll just take the money and run. They already have your money after all, why pay for patches?

Re:I support this

[KDR_11k]

Most companies make more than one game and usually these games are aimed at the same userbase. Of course a shovelware publisher would probably hope you'd just forget his name so the next time you come across one of his games you won't put it back the moment you see the name but most of the big name publishers and developers have reputations that directly affect their sales. Get a reputation for broken and unpatched games and you'll sell less of them (EA had to downsize over massive losses so don't point at them claiming "it works for them"), get a reputation for polished games and good patching and you get more sales (see Blizzard and Valve).

Re:I support this

[Wellington Grey]

Hopefully this will keep publishers from shipping broken/empty games with plans of patching them up later (*cough* UT3 *cough*); and we could go back to actually getting a working game on the disk, not a game in need of a patch and more content.

Don't worry, they'll just charge you for the patches.

So what's wrong with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

at 16 cents per gigabyte, with most content, paid or otherwise, being a lot less in size than that - I see nothing wrong. If you're giving out a few gigs worth of content, chances are you're doing it for money or you're going to get the money back in some way.

All the free content that was up before is still up now.

Yes I own a PS3. Sometimes I play online a lot, sometimes i dont touch the system for months, sometimes its moderate usage. It's more than paid itself off when compared to a $50 a year live fee.

And yes, I would definitely argue that xbox live subscriber is the same thing...

I mean, how is it not? Very few users are going to download over $50 worth of bandwidth content a year at this measure =\, on any system.

A NOTE:
-this "content" is limited to the store only. Game updates are not done through sony in any way. They are still free. Online gaming on the ps3 has been and still is free of bandwidth charges - due to the fact that usually the games run on publishers' servers, not on sony's.

Start=Pause, DLC $5.99=Unpause.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

DLC and micro transactions are quickly becoming anoying. Now developers are beginning to simply give you less for more, and charge you later for the things they left out.

The worst is when the content is actually on the actual game disc, but it needs to be unlocked via online purchase.

Its only going to get worse.

Untenable

[Anenome]

Developers do not appreciate this at all. Live is more successful, both from a consumer and developer point of view. Not all consumers want to play online at all, so they don't need to pay for it. And shifting the burden to developers, to put them in a position where the more popular their game is the more money it costs them is not a good position at all.

How is that "Untenable"

[SuperKendall]

And shifting the burden to developers, to put them in a position where the more popular their game is the more money it costs them is not a good position at all.

But the more popular it is, the more copies they will sell as well. Where did that fit into your equation?

You seem to think a developer would be going "dammit, my game is too popular, and the demos that cost my $0.20 are hardly offset by the $60.00 sale price that millions are forking over. Pull the plug on my overly successful game!"

Shifting the burden to content providers is exactly where the rest of the world shifts the burden to in other areas of media, so why is this so alien for game developers too?

not all that bad

[timmarhy]

it doesn't look anymore expensive than paying for hosting else where to serve your files, and it's a damn sight better than expecting us to pay for it. i sense this story is an attempt at the usual /. sony hate nonense

Re:not all that bad

[Kalriath]

Sounds like Dreamhost or some other equally terrifying overseller.

You do realise that your host hasn't actually got capacity to deliver you 2.5 terabytes right? If you actually managed to transfer that, they'd mysteriously find some way to terminate your account, because they count on you buying "2.5 terabytes" and using 250 megabytes. If everyone actually used 2.5 terabytes, the host would be bankrupted by the end of month invoice from their upstream provider.

Polygons vs MPEG for transmitting movies

[Vegan Pagan]

This raises a question I've had for a long time: If the consumer has a gaming PC or game console, does it take less bandwidth to send them a CG movie in polygon form or in MPEG/H.264 form? GTA4 on Xbox 360 is an enormous game that fits into 7 GB. If you made a 720P 60FPS H.264 movie of a fairly thorough playthrough of GTA4 including cutscenes, how many GB would that be? If TV/movie studios want to send an entire TV series in HD to customers over the internet, they might save a lot of bandwidth fees if they could send it as polygons instead of MPEG. Of course, the TV series could only be created by artists at computer desks, not by actors on sets, so bandwidth capping would give game companies an advantage over Hollywood on the internet. I doubt even Pixar or Dreamworks would send their movies as game console-ready polygons because they're used to having nearly infinite memory and rendering time.

Ultimately, Hollywood will have to do some major lobbying and investing with the telecoms so that every home can affordably stream real HD video over the internet.

Is Sony Suicidal?

[Bones3D_mac]

You know, the more I hear about this kind of crap, the more I wonder if Sony is actually trying to ruin the PlayStation brand name. Every move they make seems to contradict common sense when it comes to business, almost as though they're afraid that following standard business tactics will make them seem weak to the consumer and their investors.

At the rate Sony is going, the PS3 will be the end of the line for the company as a console manufacturer, just like the Dreamcast did for Sega. Even though a console is technically great, it won't survive if the marketing strategies are poorly executed.

Just think, all of those great remaining PS3 exclusive franchises might become XBox 360 exclusives well before the predicted 10 year life span of the PS3 ends... complete with sony's own logo on the package!